A Constructive Theology of Intellectual Disability:Human Being as Mutuality and Response: Human Being as Mutuality and Response

1. Gordon Kaufman: Human Being as Intentional Agent

19 1. Gordon Kaufman: Human Being as Intentional Agent for gordon kaufman, theology is work of the human imagination . It is not a description of how things “really” are. We have no direct access to the referent of our concept of God, and thus we have no way of determining the accuracy of our representations of God. Similarly, with the concepts of world and human being, we cannot get outside of our place within the world or our place within humanity in order to encounter the world or the human being as objects for examination .1 Thus, our aim in theological work, as Kaufman sees it, is not the determination of whether our theological concepts fit reality. It is the construction of theological concepts that get us where we want to go—concepts that provide us with adequate orientation in life.2 It is human work “emerging out of faith’s own need for more adequate orientation and symbolization.”3 Where, one is moved to ask, does Kaufman assume we would want to go in our theological work? What is it that determines whether our orientation and symbolization are adequate? Kaufman does not depart from tradition here. The construction of theological concepts and symbols that provide adequate orientation for human life is based on those concepts and symbols already inherited from the culture within which the theologian is located, with its religious traditions, myths, rituals, taboos, and linguistic classifications. However, there are times in which the work of the theologian draws attention to what has previously been unrecognized by the tradition.4 At this point, the theologian engages in the construction of new concepts of God, world, and human being.5 Such theological work must have comprehensiveness to it. In order to construct concepts that provide orientation for human life, it must engage a broad spectrum of experience. “No important dimension of experience can be omitted, and he or she must exert every 20 ‡ gordon kaufman: human being as intentional agent effort to root out one-sidedness, prejudice and bias.”6 With adequate attention to the broad range of human experiences, it is possible that the theologian will realize the inadequacy of traditional religious symbols and concepts and will reconstruct those that are meaningful for our time. Thus, one important criterion for Kaufman in determining the adequacy of our religious symbols is the degree to which our symbols reflect an understanding of God, world, and human being that is appropriate to the broad spectrum of human experiences and as a result provides an understanding of human life that is meaningful. In this chapter, I explore Kaufman’s construction of the theological concept “human being” and the degree to which this construction does or does not fulfill his requirement of appropriateness to human experience and the provision of meaning for human life, particularly as this relates to individuals with profound intellectual disabilities. His concept of the human can be found explicitly from his early work in Systematic Theology to his more recent In Face of Mystery. As I will demonstrate, Kaufman’s theological anthropology is developed primarily around an understanding of the human as agent, with capacities for symbol-use, intentionality, self-reflection, creativity, and purposeful action. While he avers that there is no “essence” to human being—no reified point at which the theologian locates “human being”—he himself locates what is essential to human being in the capacity to “grasp, shape, create” itself in and through historical processes—what Kaufman refers to as our “biohistoricity.”7 This concept is one of his most distinctive contributions to theological anthropology. For Kaufman, humans are biological beings in their interconnection with and interdependence upon other forms of life. But they are also historical beings because they are both created by the historical processes that precede them as well as endowed with the power to transform those historical processes toward the development of a new cultural and symbolical world.8 Humans are historical beings with the capacity for self-reflection necessary to set goals and to act purposefully to attain them.9 Kaufman claims that this biohistorical understanding of the human is inclusive of the variety of concepts of human existence because, by definition, it includes the capacity to create different understandings of the nature of the human.10 gordon kaufman: human being as intentional agent ‡ 21 Without question, Kaufman’s efforts to develop an anthropology...